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McKinsey & Co.McKinsey & Co. are a bad influence because they are all about money.

First, it is preposterous for them to suggest that Canada should eventually settle 600,000 immigrants annually. This is just going to drive inflation, wealth inequality and environmental destruction. Are there no limits to growth? Second, we all know that when we mix private and public money, the risks get socialized and the profits get privatized. Think SkyDome!

Third, consulting companies like McKinsey operate on the premise that people respond to incentives. This implies that employees are not intrinsically motivated to do a good job and that they need to be incentivized by extrinsic financial bonuses. This is pure demoralizing cynicism that leads to acrimony when employees compete with each other for limited resources.

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Fourth, most people who make it in business are heartless. Are we supposed to believe that firms like McKinsey & Co. have a social conscience? For them, it’s an afterthought.

In the final analysis, consulting companies will not save the world. As the great journalist Chris Hedges notes, only real love saves people and makes the world better.

Tobi Baumhard, King City

No doubt Dominic Barton is a smart, ethical, kind and family-conscious man. He brings a wealth of life experience and a richness of professional acumen to any table.

But the tables he sits at are all in boardrooms. His firm, McKinsey & Co., has successfully perpetuated the profit ethic for big-money corporations the world over. McKinsey, however, has never made or created anything.

The root ecological, financial and social issue that the world is so grimly steeped in at the moment is the self-perpetuating generation and concentration of wealth in ever-fewer grasping hands.

Barton speaks with credible humanism but what he does keeps the game on that hugely skewed field.

Peter Currier, Peterborough, Ont.

There was a moment of interesting irony in the feature story about Dominic Barton. Although the writer wanted to portray the subject as a rich capitalist who was actually quite thoughtful and human, a little detail betrayed this benevolent attempt.

One of the companies name-dropped as beneficiaries of Barton’s brilliance was GE. However, on the cover of the same paper was a large in-depth story of how dangerously negligent Peterborough GE has been in its treatment of its blue-collar workers.

This simple coincidence makes one wonder how many of Barton’s massively powerful clients acted in similar unethical ways?

When you are getting rich from the complicated web and machinery of industrial capitalism, you have to give up your hopes of also being a nice thoughtful guy.

Matt Kydd, Peterborough

I hope Dominic Barton grasps that people who have nothing to lose pose the greatest danger to everyone else.

Careers, businesses, industries and wealth are built on “serving” them. The rest of us want our society to include people we can feel superior to. They provide opportunities to donate used items and hold fundraising events, do volunteer work — activities we can brag about and which make us feel good.

Dominic Barton’s story has good points, but more than six months have gone by and where are the immediate, practical, ideas? Here are my immediate, practical ideas.

Imports of manufactured goods must be no greater than Canada’s exports of manufactured goods: $349 billion per year. Imports over and above our exports, referred to as excess imports, force Canada to send money to foreign countries to pay for those imports.

Sending money to foreign countries for any purpose seriously damages and weakens our economy. Very unwisely, Canada is currently allowing estimated excess imports of $122 billion per year.

Barton should be telling the prime minister and the governor of the Bank of Canada that sending $122 billion to foreign countries every year is sheer waste and must be ended. Keeping that $122 billion in Canada could put one million Canadians back to work.

Edward J. Farkas, Toronto

The article’s title is a misnomer, since McKinsey & Co.’s head, Canadian Dominic Barton, had nothing to volunteer besides the bromide that companies must contribute to society as well as to their shareholders’ value.

He offered no clue that would counter his consulting firm’s usual advice to maximize profits by downsizing in a world desperately in need of gainful employment.

Or is he hoarding his solutions for sale to his client companies? There can be no effective solution without changing the rules of capitalism.

Jim Heller, Toronto

According to economist Dominic Barton, half of all jobs will be automated during the next 10 years. At the same time, the workforce is aging and shrinking. Sounds to me like the perfect fit, because there will be fewer jobs and fewer workers needing jobs.

But then he wants immigration increased by hundreds of thousands. Excuse me, but exactly what jobs will these immigrants do? Am I missing something?

Stratton Holland, Markham

Thanks for the interesting article on Dominic Barton, head of McKinsey & Co.

He claims that our capitalist system is sick and the evidence seems to prove him correct. Could he or any other expert in the field explain to the average citizen just how the economic system works?

Why is it always a strain to find enough money to feed and house the poor, sustain our health system, educate our kids, maintain our infrastructure, protect our environment and a myriad of other society-benefitting projects while billions are available to conquer space, build various devices to kill each other on both an individual and massive scale, entertain ourselves with blockbuster movies and countless video devices and squander our resources in so many ways?

Why is it that those who produce our food, educate our kids, protect our society, assist our elderly, etc. are not nearly as well-rewarded as those who juggle stocks, star in movies or play sports?

Is this just a matter of preference? Or is it that we would just prefer to be entertained rather than be bothered with helping our fellow citizens or improving our environment? Sobering questions that need answering.

Tom Sullivan, Toronto

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